Authors

Carl Horn, Laurence Jervis

The client is an international Christian movement that expresses its faith in charitable work to provide both spiritual and social support. They have 1.65M members worldwide with around 15K in Australia. They have a national network of shops selling donated household goods and clothing.

Terra Firma was engaged by the client for process engineering services. This involved documenting the client’s systems that supported the booking and collection of charitable donations in East and South Australian territories, and the data flows between their shop POS and financial systems.

Both territories used different bespoke systems aged from the mid 2000’s. They suffered from performance issues and used some technologies no longer supported. Each region’s systems experienced their own limitations and pain points. Truck drivers who conducted donation pick-ups used iPads linked to these systems to manage their work. These had difficult interfaces and affected overall system performance when in use. The shop POS to financial system data flows used a module no longer supported.

Terra Firma was engaged to develop business process maps for both pick-up booking systems, and create as-is and future state maps for the shop POS to financial system data flows.

Terra Firma interviewed multiple stakeholders across Victoria and NSW, including management, IT, team leaders, transport supervisors and schedulers, both virtually and on-site.

Terra Firma then consolidated interview feedback to create Visio process maps which outlined current pain points and observations in the processes. Swim lane diagrams were used to highlight the processes across the different system users. Reporting capabilities of each system were also documented, including shortfalls where users felt they could not get information they needed.

Terra Firma developed an as-is state data flow map of the shop POS data flows. A future state map was then created to highlight the opportunity to bypass the now unsupported module.

The client’s management are now well placed to have a clear understanding of the current state with its limitations and pain points. Terra Firma improved our client’s ability to determine opportunities for improving systems and processes and merging these nationwide.